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By their brief exile the Medici had gained the credit of injured innocence, the fame of martyrdom in the popular cause.  Their foes had struck the first blow, and in striking at them had seemed to aim against the liberties of the republic.  The mere failure of their adversaries to hold the power they had acquired, handed over this power to the Medici; and the reprisals which the Medici began to take had the show of justice, not of personal hatred, or petty vengeance.  Cosimo was a true Florentine.  He disliked violence, because he knew that blood spilt cries for blood.  His passions, too, were cool and temperate.  No gust of anger, no intoxication of success, destroyed his balance.  His one object, the consolidation of power for his family on the basis of popular favour, was kept steadily in view; and he would do nothing that might compromise that end.  Yet he was neither generous nor merciful.  We therefore find that from the first moment of his return to Florence he instituted a system of pitiless and unforgiving persecution against his old opponents.  The Albizzi were banished, root and branch, with all their followers, consigned to lonely and often to unwholesome stations through the length and breadth of Italy.  If they broke the bonds assigned them, they were forthwith declared traitors and their property was confiscated.  After a long series of years, by merely keeping in force the first sentence pronounced upon them, Cosimo had the cruel satisfaction of seeing the whole of that proud oligarchy die out by slow degrees in the insufferable tedium of solitude and exile.  Even the high-souled Palla degli Strozzi, who had striven to remain neutral, and whose wealth and talents were devoted to the revival of classical studies, was proscribed because to Cosimo he seemed too powerful.  Separated from his children, he died in banishment at Padua.  In this way the return of the Medici involved the loss to Florence of some noble citizens, who might perchance have checked the Medicean tyranny if they had stayed to guide the State.  The plebeians, raised to wealth and influence by Cosimo before his exile, now took the lead in the republic.  He used these men as catspaws, rarely putting himself forward or allowing his own name to appear, but pulling the wires of government in privacy by means of intermediate agents.  The Medicean party was called at first Puccini from a certain Puccio, whose name was better known in caucus or committee than that of his real master.

To rule through these creatures of his own making taxed all the ingenuity of Cosimo; but his profound and subtle intellect was suited to the task, and he found unlimited pleasure in the exercise of his consummate craft.  We have already seen to what extent he used his riches for the acquisition of political influence.  Now that he had come to power, he continued the same method, packing the Signory and the Councils with